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The collaboration between RAG Aktiengesellschaft and ambeRoad shows how a young team from Aachen conserves knowledge from over 200 years of RAG's mining history as part of the Data Hub and thus opens up a new use case for other B2B customers.

The Data Hub Challenge: Making over 200 years of mining knowledge digitally available in the future

RAG is THE traditional company that has shaped the Ruhr region: For more than 200 years, mines in North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland produced hard coal - until the last mine was closed in 2018. However, RAG's work in the region continues: As a so-called task for eternity, RAG assumes responsibility for making the former mining regions safe and worth living in. For this task, it is essential to make the knowledge of employees, which has been built up over generations, usable and findable for future generations.

The task for the Data Hub applicants was therefore to optimize the company's internal search engine for documents, mine plans, etc. and to make the knowledge accessible quickly, efficiently and user-specifically. This is to prevent valuable know-how from being lost when employees leave the company. RAG chose the startup ambeRoad for this task as part of the third Data Hub batch: the team from Aachen had previously compared websites with competitor sites using keywords in order to optimize them as a result. They now also use this search technology in the area of corporate documents to find and classify them according to the search terms.

For RAG, in its transformation from a formerly production-oriented to a digital company, this is an important step in terms of knowledge management: "For us, the project was a successful start to the use of AI methods in the field of geoinformation and search technology. In this context, ambeRoad's know-how and innovative spirit open up completely new possibilities for the intelligent use of our data resources," says Peter Vosen, head of the geodata department at RAG.

Data Hub use case opens new doors in the B2B sector

Julian Reinauer, one of the founders of ambeRoad, is also satisfied with the new use case and the collaboration: "The project continued seamlessly after the Demo Day to optimize our solution after the proof of concept. Phase two is now about implementation in the group and developing new features with users in day-to-day operations."
The fact that the technology is also a relevant topic for other corporate customers is demonstrated by another new customer from the Ruhr region: in the reverse pitch of Initiativkreis Ruhr GmbH & the Dortmund Chamber of Industry and Commerce as part of the RuhrSummit, Siemens Energy tendered a similar case for making documents quickly available and findable.

With their solution for RAG, developed in the context of the Data Hub, ambeRoad was also able to convince Siemens Energy. The proof of concept will run until the summer, after which it will be decided whether the project will go into the next phase.

The Data Hub as a springboard for startups

For the ambeRoad team, participation in the Data Hub was a complete success and associated with a new use case as well as two new major customers: "The Data Hub was a real springboard for us and opened up a completely new and actually better use case for our search technology, with which we were able to convince customers."

He can therefore only recommend participation to all teams - including those outside Germany. Although the ambeRoad team is based in North Rhine-Westphalia, getting to know each other and coordination took place completely remotely. Julian therefore sees no problems for teams outside the Ruhr region or even outside Germany: "Since the program, the use cases, and also the contact persons are clearly defined from the start, all appointments can also be implemented very well online."